From 2007.igem.org

• In this project our aim is to transport specific metal ions from a specific location to another on the surface of engineered bacterial cells. In other words, to use cells as metal carriers.

We didn't want the metal ions to be uptaken by the cells since we want to transport specific metal ions (eg. radioactive ones) so we focused on putting metal-binding domains on the surface of the bacterial cells. This can be done by adding short metal-binding domains to bacterial constitutively expressed transmembrane proteins such as LamB or OmpC.

Ref:Engineering the Escherichia coli outer membrane protein OmpC for metal bioadsorption, Norberto Cruz, Sylvie Le Borgne, Georgina Hern´andez-Ch´avez, Guillermo Gosset, Fernando Valle & Francisco Bolivar, 2000, Biotechnology Letters, 22

For the metal transportation to occur the cells should adsorp metal ions at a specific location and release them at another specific loaction. In order to achieve this we planned to use the pH dependence of the metal-binding domains for their affinity for metals.

• Back to Brain Storming
• Projects Main Page
• Turkey Main Page